Closings

Severe Weather

On this day: August 27

2011: Hurricane Irene makes landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The storm would move up the East Coast and make landfall in southeastern New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York, the following day. Overall, the storm killed 47 and caused an estimated $15.6 billion in damage in the United States.

2008: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

2003: Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles distant.

2003: The first six-party talks, involving South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, convene to find a peaceful resolution to the security concerns as a result of the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

1990: Guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who helped ignite the blues revival of the 1980s with his band Double Trouble, dies along with three others when the helicopter he's riding in crashes into a hill following a performance in East Troy, Wisconsin. He was 35 years old.

1990: With the retractable roof at Toronto's SkyDome open on a beautiful night, a baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Toronto Blue Jays is delayed for 35 minutes after clouds of gnats descend on the stadium in the fifth inning. Closing the roof stopped the bugs and allowed the game to continue.

1984: "Good Sex! with Dr. Ruth Westheimer" premieres on the Lifetime cable channel with sex therapist Ruth Westheimer counseling actors appearing as her patients. Over the course of its seven-year run, the show's format would change to include celebrity and physician interviews and call-ins.

1979: Actor Aaron Paul, best known for his TV roles on "Breaking Bad" and "Big Love," is born in Emmett, Idaho.

1976: Actress Sarah Chalke, best known for her TV roles on "Roseanne," "Scrubs" (pictured) and "How I Met Your Mother," is born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

1969: Dog trainer Cesar Millan, known for his TV shows "Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan" and "Cesar 911," is born in Santa Clarita, California.

1967: The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, is found dead in his London home from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 32.

1965: The Beatles, who are in Los Angeles to do two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, pay an informal social visit to Elvis Presley at his home in Bel-Air, California.

1964: Actress and comedian Gracie Allen, who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns, dies of a heart attack at age 69 in Los Angeles, California. She's seen here with Burns in 1952.

1964: The Walt Disney movie "Mary Poppins," starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, premieres in Los Angeles. The movie would go on to become the No. 1 movie at the box office in 1965, earning a net profit of $28.5 million. It also earned 13 Academy Award nominations, winning five, including Best Actress for Andrews and Best Original Song for "Chim Chim Cher-ee."

1963: Civil rights activist and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, the first black student to earn a doctorate from Harvard and one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, dies at age 95 in Accra, Ghana.

1962: The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA. It later would become the first space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter.

1955: "The Guinness Book of World Records" is published for the first time. It would reach the top of the British bestseller lists by Christmas. The following year it was launched in the U.S. and sold 70,000 copies.

1953: Actor, director and playwright Peter Stormare, best known for his roles in movies like "Fargo" (pictured), "Armageddon," "Minority Report" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," and the TV series "Prison Break," is born Rolf Peter Ingvar Storm in Kumla, Sweden.

1952: Actor Paul Reubens, better known as Pee-Wee Herman, is born in Peekskill, New York.

1947: Actress Barbara Bach ("The Spy Who Loved Me," "Force 10 from Navarone") is born in Queens, New York.

1943: Actress Tuesday Weld, best known for movies like "Play It As It Lays," "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," "Once Upon a Time in America" and "Falling Down," is born Susan Ker Weld in New York City. Weld earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for "Looking for Mr. Goodbar."

1942: Musician Daryl Dragon, best known as the keyboardist for the 1970s Grammy Award-winning pop duo Captain & Tennille, is born in Los Angeles, California. Together with his wife, Toni Tennille, Dragon had five albums certified gold or platinum and scored numerous hits during their highest period of popularity, including "Love Will Keep Us Together," "Do That to Me One More Time and "Muskrat Love." They also hosted their own television variety series in 1976–77.

1939: The turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft, makes its first flight.

1908: Lyndon B. Johnson, who would go on to become the 36th president of the United States, is born in Stonewall, Texas. Johnson ascended to the presidency following the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, completed Kennedy's term and was elected president in his own right, winning by a large margin over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. He died of a heart attack at age 64 on Jan. 22, 1973.

1899: English author C. S. Forester, best known for the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series and novel "The African Queen," is born in Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt.

1896: The Anglo-Zanzibar War, the shortest war in world history, takes place from 9:02 to 9:30 a.m. between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

1883: The island volcano Krakatoa erupts and the resulting tidal waves kill 36,417 on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra.

1859: Col. Edwin L. Drake strikes "rock oil" in Titusville, Pennsylvania, leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well. The resulting oil boom was the first in the United States.

1813: French Emperor Napoleon I defeats a larger force of Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1783: Jacques Alexandre César Charles, a member of the French Academy of Science, launches the first balloon inflated with hydrogen gas. The unmanned flight ascended from the Place des Victories in Paris to a height of nearly 3,000 feet and came down some 15 miles away where terrified peasants attacked and destroyed it.

1776: In what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under Gen. William Howe defeat Americans under Gen. George Washington in the Battle of Long Island. The battle is the first major battle of the American Revolutionary War following the United States' Declaration of Independence and the first battle in which an army of the United States engaged an enemy, having declared itself a nation only the month before.

Comments

The views expressed are not those of this site, this station or its affiliated companies. By posting your comments you agree to accept our terms of use.